James Joyce and narrative territory: The distinct functions of lost time in “An Encounter” and “The Sisters”
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Terence Patrick Murphy
Abstract
In this paper, I explore the notion of lost time in critical accounts of narrative fiction. The paper begins by briefly exploring the work of the representative New Critics Brooks and Warren on the description of past time. I then move to consider the story/sequence distinction in the work of narratologists such as Genette, Chatman and Bal. As a bridge to the major discussion, I introduce Michael Toolan's Narrative (2001 [1988]) which attempts to explore how aspects of the narrative are revealed through key lexicogrammatical choices. I attempt to build on Toolan's basic insight about the importance of thematically marked sentences in a brief re-reading of the narrative discourse of Joyce's “Eveline”. In order to resolve a central difficulty in Toolan's analysis, I put forward a theory of narrative territory – the creation within the narrative discourse of a differentiated spatiotemporal continuum for the story events. Within the conceptual framework provided by the concept of the narrative territory, I then contrast the distinct functions of lost time in James Joyce's unmarked order fiction “An Encounter” and his marked order narrative “The Sisters”.
© Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Worlds in worlds: Assigning inferences to subdomains
- Episode structures in literary narratives
- James Joyce and narrative territory: The distinct functions of lost time in “An Encounter” and “The Sisters”
- Exploring the common ground: Sensus communis, humor and the interpretation of comic poetry
- Did Lou inspire guilt, as well?
- Marisa Bortolussi and Peter Dixon. Psychonarratology: Foundations for the Empirical Study of Literary Response
- Mario Saraceni. The Language of Comics
- Graeme Ritchie. The Linguistic Analysis of Jokes
- A.-M. Simon-Vandenbergen, Miriam Taverniers, and Louise Ravelli. Grammatical Metaphor: Views from Systemic Functional Linguistics
- Max Louwerse and Willie van Peer. Thematics: Interdisciplinary Studies
- Index of articles in Volume 33 (2004)
Articles in the same Issue
- Worlds in worlds: Assigning inferences to subdomains
- Episode structures in literary narratives
- James Joyce and narrative territory: The distinct functions of lost time in “An Encounter” and “The Sisters”
- Exploring the common ground: Sensus communis, humor and the interpretation of comic poetry
- Did Lou inspire guilt, as well?
- Marisa Bortolussi and Peter Dixon. Psychonarratology: Foundations for the Empirical Study of Literary Response
- Mario Saraceni. The Language of Comics
- Graeme Ritchie. The Linguistic Analysis of Jokes
- A.-M. Simon-Vandenbergen, Miriam Taverniers, and Louise Ravelli. Grammatical Metaphor: Views from Systemic Functional Linguistics
- Max Louwerse and Willie van Peer. Thematics: Interdisciplinary Studies
- Index of articles in Volume 33 (2004)
